Combining elements of Ghost, Field of Dreams and a half dozen other hateful dramadies, Heart and Souls breaks the gimmick jinx by blending laughs and tears into a magical fantasy. The prankish touch of director Ron Underwood (City Slickers) comes in handy when sentiment attacks. The plot concerns four troubled San Franciscans (Charles Grodin, Kyra Sedgwick, Alfre Woodard and Tom Sizemore) who die in a bus crash in 1959 the same night that Thomas Reilly (Robert Downey, Jr.) is born. These souls can't get to heaven until they complete some unfinished business. To do it, they must enter the body of Reilly, who has grown into a stuffy careerist.

Downey (Chaplin) shows an explosive talent for physical comedy, most memorably at a business meeting when a feminine spirit moves him and at a B.B. King concert when a shy Grodin uses him to sing the national anthem. The scene is a show stopper, highlighting a potently acted, buoyantly funny film that trades on emotion without making you gag on it.

“The Pretender”

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."